AN ARMADA IS GATHERING in the Strait of Hormuz. Naval vessels from 25 different nations, including the USA, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - they are purportedly about to carry out their yearly 12-day exercise.
If this is really such an incongruous event annually held; why does today’s Sunday Telegraph choose to give it a splash? Well, for weeks, if not months, there has been constant talk of Israel launching an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, timed to take place either before or soon after the November presidential election in America.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, has threatened such an attack and with good reason for so doing. For years the Israelis have been aware of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear programme and have been accosted by such vitriolic rhetoric from him that leaves the Israel’s in little doubt about what this Muslim fundamentalist would like to do to the Jewish state – after all if Ahmadinejad were a citizen of the UK and used the language he uses here; he would be brought up on a hate crime charge.
Israel’s main ally, the USA has sought to intervene to prevent such an attack by requesting that Israel gives time for the ever more harshly contrived sanctions to work and create a kind of ‘Arab Spring’ in Iran among its people. But having seen how the original Arab Spring is developing, Israel can no longer afford to allow the same mistake to be repeated when it comes to the Jewish state’s survival.
Netanyahu knows that time is not on his country’s side. If Iran were successful in destroying forever the Jewish state, Iran would become the power house of the region; all conquering and heralded by the rest of the Muslim world as its centre (the new Mecca): which is why both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as Israel, all know what is at stake if Iran becomes a nuclear power which all Muslims can rally around.
It is not only in Israel’s interests, but also the West’s as well as those Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE; who will no doubt be seeking to become nuclear powers themselves if Iran is left to its own devices with little threat other than economic sanctions; which in all such cases leaves the ruling class amply fed - it is Iraq all over again in the period before the West’s invasion, when the ruling elite kept themselves well fed despite president Clinton’s sanctions.
If Israel can delay Iran’s nuclear purpose for a year or two, it presents all sorts of possibilities. If Israel deferred Iran’s procurement of nuclear weapons for two years it will have achieved far more than sanctions could ever do, however severe. Sanctions do not prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions however relentless the West believes them to be. Only military action designed to damage and delay them will have a sufficient impact to allow further harm to be done to them if they resurrect their ambitions.
Then and only then, would the Iranian people feel that enough is enough and once more dare to take to the streets to overthrow their president and the hideous Ali Khomeini who is the true puppet master of this once cultured nation.
ISRAEL SHOULD PROCEED with its long heralded attack upon the Iranian nuclear programme. If Benjamin Netanyahu believes, through his intelligence sources, that a military attack would succeed and do sufficient harm to Ahmadinejad’s ambitions; that would allow for further advancement in the West’s response; then it would be worth taking.
Israel feels the whole Arab world closing vice-like upon it. The Arab Spring has not delivered democracy, only a united Arab front against the state of Israel led by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arab world is in flux; but the one thing that unites them is the destruction of Israel, and every Arab religious faction will use this to unite themselves briefly enough to see the Jews once more driven from the ancient land called Judea.
The fleet now congregating in the Strait of Hormuz to carry out an annual military exercise is there primarily to keep the oil flowing in the event of an Israel attack. Israel believes Iran will have a bomb by this time next year. If this proves to be true, then this part of the world will be more dangerous than ever, and the West will be to blame for any unfolding disaster.
The West has relied upon sanctions and the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime. This, if it were ever to happen, it will not do so before Tehran has a fully functioning nuclear weapon to threaten Israel with. What the West’s strategy would then be, they themselves do not really know, which is Netanyahu has demanded his red line. If he does not get it, he not going to mess around with his nation’s security in order for Obama to get re-elected.
Benjamin Netanyahu is no liberal. His hero is Winston Churchill[1]; and I would ask the British people what they would do if this island nation were surrounded by enemies in the manner of Israel; with any one of them on the brink of becoming a nuclear power and without any prospect of being appealed to through reason; just as Hitler could not be appealed to and had to be destroyed.
If we are forced to confront a nuclear Iran militarily, think of the body count if Ahmadinejad were to go nuclear, which he probably would if he faced defeat by Israel and the West. We have prevaricated, stalled, dithered and dissembled, in order not to face up to the threat that is Iran. It is about time, before it is too late, to draw that red line Netanyahu is asking for in order to stop his country acting alone – but sadly, and perhaps tragically, alone is where Israel may find herself if Obama wins in November.
[1] And like Churchill, Netanyahu is thought upon as a warmonger by his enemies at home and in the West – they comprise those hapless oppositionists that Wellington in his time called the ‘croakers’.
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